North County on the Job: Business owner’s third career even surprised her

RANCHO BERNARDO  Carrie Ellwood started out teaching, switched to corporate sales and then briefly worked for a small company that provided off-road Hummer adventures.

Then, like an accomplished chef, she combined her three life-experience ingredients and produced a dish she never imagined.

Today she owns and operates Out of the Ordinary, a small company based in Rancho Bernardo that specializes in putting on team-building experiences for local companies (such as Qualcomm) and national and regional businesses that choose San Diego as a destination for meetings.

“It’s funny,” said Ellwood, 60. “I think about this a lot. I’m doing something that I never in a million years thought I’d be doing. I’m on my third career, and it’s funny how life does things and how you fall into stuff. But every other career led to this.”

Out of the Ordinary will celebrate its 15th anniversary in September. While it also provides adventure experiences to individuals and groups — such as kayaking, snorkeling, and parasailing — its primary focus is on working with companies to provide a variety of team-building activities for their employees.

Ellwood uses the instruction skills she learned as an elementary school teacher for about nine years, and the sales and communication skills she developed in 14 years of selling copiers for Konica. Plus, her experience with the adventure outfit put her in contact with the Convention and Visitors Bureau and some of the companies that plan outings in San Diego County.

Today, she works out of her home office, setting up a variety of company team-building activities in locales from hotels to parks and beaches. Although she has an operations manager, she establishes the relationship with clients and handles sales and billing. She’s the point person. She has the training to step in to lead hands-on activities when necessary, but it’s rarely needed.

Ellwood has about 30 employees, most of them independent contractors who have other jobs. One is a chef; another is a professional photographer. Many of those lead the activities that are geared to promoting teamwork and understanding among a company’s employees. In turn, those companies hope for better production, efficiency and communication.

Those activities might be outrigger canoe or dragon boat races, a “Survivor”-type team challenge, a beach Olympics, a miniature golf tournament or a Navy SEALs training exercise led by retired SEALs — more popular than ever since the SEALs killed Osama bin Laden.

Ellwood said the team-building can be rigorous or light and fun. Most of what they do is “on the fun end.”

“The goal is just to get them working together, having a good time and getting to know each other,” said Ellwood, whose operation has been named best team-building company in 2009 and 2010 by Southern California Meetings + Events magazine. “But we always try to get them to take a little bit more away.”

One pitfall Ellwood tries to avoid is making the whole process “hokey.”

She says when she was in the corporate world and made to take part in team-building exercises, she hated it.

“I was always the person that hid out in the bar and tried to get out of it,” she said. Mainly, because she was turned off by the tasks they were asked to do, or she was afraid of being embarrassed in some athletic competition.

“So I totally get that,” Ellwood said. She makes certain her activity leaders — whom she calls the strength of her programs — get past “the hokey factor” by focusing on ice breakers and team activities.

Now, she gets a kick out of watching men and women come together, even if it’s groups of co-workers just trying to win a “rock, paper, scissors” tournament.

“It’s fun to see people get excited about doing this stuff,” she said.